But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Matthew 6:33.
Immediately we look at these words of Jesus, we find them the most revolutionary statement human ears ever listened to. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God.” We argue in exactly the opposite way, even the most spiritually-minded of us—‘But I must live; I must make so much money; I must be clothed; I must be fed.’ The great concern of our lives is not the kingdom of God, but how we are to fit ourselves to live. Jesus reverses the order: Get rightly related to God first, maintain that as the great care of your life, and never put the concern of your care on the other things. “Take no thought for your life …” Our Lord points out the utter unreasonableness from His standpoint of being so anxious over the means of living. Jesus is not saying that the man who takes thought for nothing is blessed—that man is a fool. Jesus taught that a disciple has to make his relationship to God the dominating concentration of his life, and to be carefully careless about everything else in comparison to that. Jesus is saying—Don’t make the ruling factor of your life what you shall eat and what you shall drink, but be concentrated absolutely on God. Some people are careless over what they eat and drink, and they suffer for it; they are careless about what they wear, and they look as they have no business to look; they are careless about their earthly affairs, and God holds them responsible. Jesus is saying that the great care of the life is to put the relationship to God first, and everything else second. It is one of the severest disciplines of the Christian life to allow the Holy Spirit to bring us into harmony with the teaching of Jesus in these verses.
“I call to remembrance my song in the night.” (Psalm 77:6.)
I HAVE read somewhere of a little bird that will never sing the melody his master wishes while his cage is full of light. He learns a snatch of this, a bar of that, but never an entire song of its own until the cage is covered and the morning beams shut out. A good many people never learn to sing until the darkling shadows fall. The fabled nightingale carols with his breast against a thorn. It was in the night that the song of the angels was heard. It was at midnight that the cry came, “Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.” Indeed it is extremely doubtful if a soul can really know the love of God in its richness and in its comforting, satisfying completeness until the skies are black and lowering. Light comes out of darkness, morning out of the womb of the night. James Creelman, in one of his letters, describes his trip through the Balkan States in search of Natalie, the exiled Queen of Serbia. “In that memorable journey,” he says, “I learned for the first time that the world’s supply of attar of roses comes from the Balkan Mountains. And the thing that interested me most,” he goes on, “is that the roses must be gathered in the darkest hours. The pickers start out at one o’clock and finish picking them at two. “At first it seemed to me a relic of superstition; but I investigated the picturesque mystery, and learned that actual scientific tests had proven that fully forty per cent of the fragrance of roses disappeared in the light of day.” And in human life and human culture that is not a playful, fanciful conceit; it is a real veritable fact.—Malcolm J. McLeod.
‘The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia.’ Acts 7:2 SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Acts 7:1–8
When Abraham was in a state of ignorance, and probably an idolater, God revealed himself unto him (Acts 7:2) as the God of glory. Thus the work begins in all his people. If not idolaters in the gross sense, yet in a spiritual sense we are all idolaters—self-worshippers, lovers of the world, lovers of pleasure more than of God, and this is idolatry. The Lord finds his people when they seek him not—indeed they seek him, and sometimes for a long space and under many discouragements before they know him to their comfort, but he begins with them before they can seek him at all. This is universally true whatever advantages they may have of outward means, yet till he speaks to their hearts they know him not, nor have any true desire after him. The Lord begins by revealing himself to the soul as the God of glory. When the Lord appeared, then Abraham saw the vanity of idols. Even the notions we have of God by nature, are so unsuitable to the representation he has made of himself by his Word and Spirit, that while we pretend to worship him, we may be said to worship an idol. If we do not apprehend him as the God of glory, glorious in holiness, justice and truth, we worship not the true God but an imagination of our own hearts. Many, if they would examine their own hearts, might be convinced they have in a manner thought him such a one as themselves; they deny his most essential attributes, or they could not presume on his favour while they live in their sins.
FOR MEDITATION: In those early days there was no written word. But now we have the Scriptures complete we are not to expect to hear a voice or see a glory with our bodily eyes. He makes himself known by his Word and Spirit. And this, though a silent way and unperceived by others, is accompanied with no less certain evidences of his presence and power than if he was to speak in thunder and appear to us in the awful manner he did to Israel at Mount Sinai. Such an outward display of majesty might indeed overawe the carnal heart for a season, but would not change it. The glory of God can only be seen to good purpose by the eyes of the mind (2 Corinthians 4).
Missionaries in Japan and founders of the Oriental Missionary Society Charles and Lettie Cowman from The ScriptoriumBorn in Toulon, Illinois, Charles Cowman moved with his family to Thayer, Iowa, birthplace of Lettie Burd, when he was two years old. They became childhood sweethearts and were married in 1889. They moved to Chicago and were converted at Grace Methodist Episcopal Church. After hearing A.B. Simpson, founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, give a missionary challenge, they dedicated themselves to missionary service. After brief training at Martin Wells Knapp’s God’s Bible School in Cincinnati, they went to Japan as independent missionaries in early 1901. There they teamed up with Juji Nakada, a Japanese whom they met when Nakada was a student at Moody Bible Institute in the late 1890s.
Leasing a hall in Tokyo, they began by conducting nightly evangelistic rallies and a daytime Bible training school for workers. A distinctive feature of their ministry was the Every Creature Crusade, an effort to reach every home in Japan with the gospel of Jesus Christ, a feat they claimed was accomplished between the years 1912 and 1918. Together with Nakada and E.A. Kilbourne, they organized their work as the Oriental Missionary Society (today, OMS International). Eventually they also established work in Korea and China as well as Japan.
After Charles’s untimely death, Lettie continued to play a significant role in OMS. After Kilbourne’s death in 1928 she held the office of president until 1949, longer than anyone else. She traveled the world speaking in behalf of missions, and is best remembered for her compilation of devotional materials in Streams in the Desert (1925). OMS International was born in the holiness movement and continues today in the tradition of Wesleyan Arminian theology, with an emphasis on evangelism, church planting, and training.
Everett N. Hunt, Jr. “Cowman, Charles Elmer and Lettie (Burd),” in Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, ed. Gerald H. Anderson (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 1998), 156.
Lloyd Cassel Douglas, an American minister and author, was born Doya C. Douglas.
American writer who published popular novels about religious and moral issues. Douglas’s first book, MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION, appeared in 1929 and became a huge success. The work was rejected by two major publishers. It was issued by a small religious publishing firm and sold in a few years three million copies. In the 1930s Douglas was one of the most popular novelist in the United States. THE ROBE (1942), set in Christ’s time, was made into a lavish Technicolor film in 1953, starring Richard Burton, Jean Simmons, Victor Mature. It received 5 Academy Award nominations and won 2.
“Most of the people they knew were in a constant dither about their slaves; buying and selling and exchanging. It wasn’t often that Father disposed of one; and when, rarely, he had done so, it was because the slave had mistreated another over whom he has some small authority. They had lost an excellent cook that way, about a year ago. Minna had grown crusty and cruel toward the kitchen crew, scolding then loudly and knocking them about, She had been warned a few times. Then, one day, Minna had slapped Tertia. Lucia wondered, briefly, where Minna was now. She certainly did know how to bake honey cakes.” (from The Robe) Lloyd Cassell Douglas was born in Columbia City, Indiana as the son of Alexander Jackson Douglas, a Lutheran clergyman, and Sarah Jane (Cassel) Douglas. He was educated as a minister at Wittenberg Seminary in Springfield, Ohio. After his ordination he served as pastor in North Manchester, Indiana. In 1904 he married Bessio Io Porch, by whom he had two daughters, Bessie L. Douglas (bc 1906) and Virginia V Douglas (bc 1908).
In 1905 Douglas moved to Lancaster, Ohio, and in 1908 to Washington, D.C. From 1911 to 1915 he was chaplain and director of religious work at the University of Illinois. Later Douglas became a Congregationalist. He spent many years as the pastor of churches in the United States and Canada. In 1933 he retired from the ministry and become a full time writer.
Magnificent Obsession introduced themes that reappeared in the author’s later books – a medical setting, the wealthy background, the conversion of the atheist hero to a practising Christian, due to feelings of guilt, this time after causing a death of a brain surgeon, Wayne Hudson. He is a genius who believes that if man harbors any sort of fear, no matter how benign and apparently harmless, it percolates through all his thinking and damages his personality. One of the characters says, “whoever loveth a genius is out of luck with his devotion except he beareth all things, endureth all things, suffered long and is kind.” DOCTOR HUDSON’S SECRET JOURNAL (1939) was a prequel to the story.
Several of Douglas’s books have been adapted into screen, Magnificent Obsession twice. GREEN LIGHT (1935) was filmed in 1936, starring Errol Flynn. After Captain Blood (1935) and The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) Flynn was labelled a swashbuckler, but in Green Light he was a dedicated doctor, who gives up his practice when a patient dies. The Robe, published 1942, gained wide audience as the first film in Cinemascope. The book’s title refers to the crusifixion garment worn by Jesus. The protagonist of the story is a young Roman soldier, Marcellus, in charge of the Crusifixion. He wins in a dice game at the foot of the cross Christ’s robe. Marcellus then starts to his quest to find the truth about Jesus. He becomes a convert and a martyr in Colosseum to the new religion. Burton in the role of Marcellus – in a short Roman mini skirt – was in his first great role. The book has sold over six million copies.
Douglas’s last novel, THE BIG FISHERMAN (1948), shared the same New Testament world of Palestine and Rome and focused on Jesus, Peter, and a pair of young lovers., Esther and Voldi. The Roman world of the early Christian Church is carefully drawn. However, for a modern reader, the style is perhaps too tendentious. Douglas’s main purpose was to present a Christian thesis in the form of a novel and include in the gospel narratives the aspect of human interest.
His last book was the autobiographical Time To Remember which described his life up to his childhood and education for the ministry. He died before he was able to write the intended second volume but the task was completed in The Shape of Sunday by his daughters, Virginia Douglas Dawson and Betty Douglas Wilson.
Douglas is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
This is my personal collection of thoughts and writings, mainly from much smarter people than I, which challenge me in my discipleship walk. Don't rush by these thoughts, but ponder them.
Milo 